Street View Photography’s Top 10: Slow Shutter Speed

Any camera (as everybody knows) has a number of magical abilities – the most important likely to be this one: it makes time stop with one single click. And what if we took it to the next level? Not only stopped the time, but did so for single individuals or scenes, while the rest of the world continued in its usual whirl? Can we go beyond freezing the movement to actually capturing the sense of motion? Yes, we can – if we use a trick, called slow shutter speed.

In very simple words: the lower the speed of the shutter, the longer is the time that the light has to affect the film/sensor through the aperture and the more of the movement can be registered on the photograph  – in the form of a more or less recognizable blur. On the other hand, the objects, which remain perfectly still during the whole exposure time, will come out sharp in the picture, creating an amazing contrast to the blurry parts and thus, an ocean of creative opportunities. It is a particularly useful and popular tool in street photography as well, since the slow shutter speed allows turning those run-of-the-mill subjects into exceptional, artistic images. So have a look at some of the best examples of this technique below.

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